Posted - 2011.08.16 10:32:00 -
[31]
First of all i applaud for wanting to change exploration.

I've started exploration roughly 4 years ago and with the help of dnightmare's extensive guides it was painstakingly long but rewarding and fun.

Investing in training an orca and move along my ships and modules through space was helping, but increased the 'play safe' gametype as moving with such a ship through null/lowsec was hard... really hard.

Since the changes and introduction of the wormholes every 3 week old character had the same chance of finding plexes and sites and the whole concept of investing time into exploration went down the drain as well as the fun and feeling of accomplishment.

Things that is making the whole exploration feels broken i think are:

* Lack of diversity* No feel of achieving something* The high loss ratio in low/nullsec due to despawning timers when bad people are looking for you.* the need for ships that are needed to withstand all the firepower in certain plexes.* The presence of 'normal' rats in certain type of sites.

I fancy the idea of the Hive ship and even contributed some to that thread before, but as in many aspects,you get ridiculed by those wanting to enforce their type of gameplay upon you (the pvp players) and i hopewe explorers get some sort of ship that can do the following:

A ship that has a role bonus to exploration skills, maybe scalable with levels required to fly the ship.A ship that can put out DPS and tank in case it needs to.A Ship that can 'anchor' a plex so that it cant despawn in case of emergency warpouts.A ship that can use some kind of stealth so nomadic lifestyles gets a boost.

Or, If the favour goes towards a 'mobile home' as i had with my orca, you could think into the modulartype of ships. Where you can interconnect several ships together and detach one of them when youanchored it in space. So instead of subsystems, you make up a home of several ships attached toa special structure making a whole new type of ship that can only fly and offer some basic toolslike a hangar to store stuff you find and ammunition etc. and can be left behind in a password protectedforcefield decreasing it's signature dramaticly so it's really hard to scan down while exploring.In this case you still have the chance to get caught by those wanting to get you. You are not in someuber ship but offers a safish haven for the nomadic people.

now some loose rabbles about some other points:

Not just Combat - I agree, there isn't always treasure in the most dangerous places, it can be in the fields behind your home.

Mystery - The random generated area's are the best bet for this, not knowing who or what to expect is in the core of exploration.

Nomadic lifestyle - See my first part(s) about the ships.

Chance-based income - Sure, but it needs a very, very, very good balance, else you see explorers leave when incomes too low vs risks, or you seeother professions die off as everyone is going to the gold rush called exploration profit.

Dynamic - I think one could play with 'events' tampering with time and bring back a bit of lore into the game.Have the 'unfortunate' explorer get sucked into an anomoly that warps it back in time for a moment witnessing anancient Jove battle orso without the ability to participate and have them warped back to current times where theycan use their archeology skills in the remnants of that battle to find some treasures, perhaps leaving hints in theshort scene of a flagship warping off to a planet while it's almost disintegrating.

I understand the above is a bit hard to implement thinking about current game mechanics, but during the time people witnessthe events in the past they will be out of local as they are in a different timeline at that point.

My rabbles :) , i will try to answer any valid points brought up and all, except those clearly written in the means of'it are bad ideas as i only want to kill you easily'.

Posted - 2011.08.16 11:41:00 -
[32]MysteryI would like to see non-standard systems. Such as systems without planets, rogue/deep space planets, systems with real black holes, etc. However the gates to those systems can only be found using exploration, and after one find it they will need to hack it to gain access. After a successful hack the drifting gate will allow people to use this gate for an hour.

Nomadic optionUndetectable infrastructure will be best for a nomadic/covert lifestyle, but should be forced to keep moving their infrastructure ships to stay safe. Basic rules for such ships:1. Be able to build replacement ships, rigs, modules and ammo.2. Be able to reprocess at a bad percentage.3. People should be able to jump clone to it.4. Should not depend upon any kind of fuel, as nomads can't really PI.5. Should have a covert cloak generator that is limited by time in system, so that players will have to keep moving to stay safe.

We should have one for frigates and maybe one for cruisers. The frigate support version can be Orca sized, but the cruiser version would be too large for gates, and thus would require an efficient jump drive.Lets make a better EVE.

Posted - 2011.08.16 12:29:00 -
[33]
Yes, Yes!Very interesting ideas, but implementing them needs to be in moderation. We should have at least some idea of what we are warping into. There also needs to be some incentive for "casual" explorers too, which I hope non-combat sites will provide.Sarcasm is a useful social skill.

Originally by:Janos SaalEdited by: Janos Saal on 15/08/2011 14:57:27My big problem with exploration is that a frigate with bonuses to probing and lots of mids for codebreakers, analyzers etc... seems tailor made for the task, but can't actually fight its way through the sites to get the goodies.There should obviously be challenges, but (as the proposal says) they should challenge you to think, not press F1-F8 and wait 5 minutes until the red boxes disappear.I'm imagining archaeology as some kind of detective mission, where you visit various sites, gathering clues from each which lead you to the final location, where you may be tested on your knowledge gained throughout the adventure. Maybe you have to placate some guardian of the ruins by demonstrating your knowledge of his cultre's history (which you learned from tablet fragments gathered elsewhere), or maybe you have to piece together a map which shows the only safe route through some ancient defensive system that leads to the treasure vault.In these scenarios the ship you fly should be less important 9although having higher grade scanners and analyzers should make things easier). The limiting factor should come from having to learn and remember bits of ever lore. Some people won't be interested in that, but then they can run missions.

Posted - 2011.08.16 15:01:00 -
[36]
Why even the need for a new ship? Why not a Deep Space Exploration Container or some such. Has the same TARDIS ability that secure containers have in that the capacity is greater than its volume, but increase this somewhat. Possible attributes:

Restrictions

Can only be anchored to activate in a system lower than 0.1Can only be accessed by pilot that anchoredContainer will be destroyed if subjected to a space rift jump (no taking into WHFs)

Posted - 2011.08.16 16:34:00 -
[37]Edited by: Wizzkidy on 16/08/2011 16:34:57Edited by: Wizzkidy on 16/08/2011 16:34:09I don't normally make suggestions on the forums, I hope this gets read to be honest and this is my vision of the current system and what I would like to see in the future.

At the moment exploration is the same old, Once you have spent 6 months to a year in nullsec doing exploration you see the same old stuff over and over again, You run the same sites over and over again you do the same things over and over again. This is boring! After 7 years in the game and a few doing exploration I get tired of the same old stuff. Once you have done all the 6/10 7/10 8/10 9/10 10/10 and all the escalation plexes its all the SAME.

I suggest you place some kind of randomization into the sites people find. This could be coded from a set of 1000's of different scenarios based upon what combat site you find in nullsec. Make them difficult and especially RANDOM.

This of course would not take only a day to create, you will have to spend many man hours creating set parts of code for these sites, Maybe trigger certain things within the combat site to happen set on ship types people are flying at the time, maybe how many people warp into the combat site. Lots of different options here. Think about ship setups and maybe spawn a different set of NPCs based around the age of the player or maybe even the age of people ships (just think about that 1 nightmare someone has decided to take out after its been sitting in his hanger for a year without it being blown up, This could be used to make combat sites much more fun and interesting.

With escalation sites you need to think more about the rewards compared to the travel time as well, This is a BIG issue with escalation sites at the moment, You could put in so many variables in these combat sites itFs unreal and this would contribute so much to the game.

LetFs face it when spawns happen I want them to feel and react like a player and I want them to speak in local about what they have seen and what they want to do to me! I really don't care if NPC's cheat to get certain information about my current status or ship type but I do want a varied and fun approach to combat sites in nullsec.

Posted - 2011.08.16 16:39:00 -
[38]
I would love to see exploration really mean something beyond just the profit of the explorer. What if you could, by delving deep into space and jumping through a bunch of hoops, you could discover entirely new systems? Not often mind you, maybe once or twice a year. Perhaps a stable wormhole to a new system that could only be used by frigates until it was linked with a gate. Can you imagine the bidding war for that bookmark? CCP could introduce new content peicemeal by letting explorers discover it. Just an idea; I got into this game for the exploration aspect and have been rather underwhelmed to date...

Posted - 2011.08.16 17:55:00 -
[39]
So, how do wormholes fit into this equation? I'd love to see WHs finally get their due for iteration in the context of these new ideas for exploration.

Wormholes are the embodiment of the nomadic and unknown parts of space. You can easily get lost with a covert ops frig and spend weeks scanning out different wormholes to traverse through. It'd be great if there were goals oriented around that instead of just getting lost for weeks.

Also, the Sleeper/Jove Empire connection really needs to be expanded and using that as a backdrop for some of the exploration content would be a masterstroke.

Posted - 2011.08.16 19:37:00 -
[40]
The 'jack pot' mentality is for me the greatest reason not to do exploration right now it gives me over and over the feel that I'm wasting my time doing those sites as I know I will come out empty handed rather then that what should be done is:decrease the amount of spawned sites by a lot but increase the drop chance of to 100% it should always drop something of value yes that in my eyes does mean site drops should be depending on the market price so I don't get items from a 6/10 that are worth 5 mil 'oh well another hour wasted'not saying though that they should be all the same value just that 1mil and 1bil are a bit far apart

The "Deep space" is really appealing. I would like to see Exploration become more of a non combat, null space, survive by your wits and luck, sort of career. This might attract more new players to EvE. Mystery and Chance-based income, if there is a chance to hit it really, really big, roaming around in null space, that would be very exciting.

Posted - 2011.08.16 20:31:00 -
[42]Edited by: Ciprian on 16/08/2011 20:32:44Can u pls remove all drone signatures? Or at least name them something else than `unknown`, cos no one is runing them anyway.

Posted - 2011.08.16 21:51:00 -
[43]
I would like some of the Exploration like Archaeology to feel more like Archaeology and not just a variant way of Salvaging. It would be a very good way of releasing Story info about NPC factions.

On the same vein id like to find sites related to the ancient empires The Van Jung? (might have the name wrong)

My biggest frustration over all is that the ships good for Finding sites often cannot run them. I really dont want to ahve to switch ships. Yes i can Buy a t3 that can do it all but thats excessive isk for the results.

I like the idea that some sites may be more hacking Related, even if its ust having to hack a gate to get in.

A Debris field would be just that: a grid (or more) area filed with junk. Interference keeps the good stuff hidden, but fly about, maybe with scanning of some sort, and stuff spawns. Stuff that can be hacked, analyzed, salvaged, mined, harvested, or shoots you.

In high sec this would attract treasure hunters. In low and null it also attracts those who hunt the treasure hunters.

A debris field could be a permanent feature of a solar system, an anomaly or a signature.

A completely different point: CCP right now you go exploring and what you find is wormholes wormholes wormholes. They are the vermin of the sky, and sifting through them all makes exploration a clickfest of tedium. We need something here. Maybe have the deep space scan probe tell you what type each sig is, or have WH's show as type "Unstable" instead of Unknown and sooner in the scanning down process. Something.

What about a ship, with some form of defensive gun(s) and capability, that can deploy a shield like a POS. Not a large shield, something just large enough to protect a few ships (maybe 10 at the most). So a small roving gang could park their "mobile base" in a safe spot, deploy the shield, and then explore the system. If they run into trouble then they could warp under the shield for protection. Possible additions to the mobile base:

1: A repair station, but repairing a ship should consume materials and the station would have a limited supply.

2: Add the ability to run warfare links.

3: A fitting service w/ a cargo bay that all players have access to.

The base should be something that has a pilot, must be trained for, and will stay in space when the pilot logs if the shield is deployed.

1. MysteryIt would be nice to see linear and scripted sites being moved away from (warp in, shoot trigger, loot can) and towards giving the player choices and having their decisions determine their rewards (more on this later)

2. Not just combatIMHO this ties in heavily to PvE's Many Ship Classes: the high -> low -> nullsec progression shouldn't necessarily mean advancing from frigates to cruisers to BC to T3/BS. Null (and low) should be able to accommodate all size ship hulls, not just "bigger is better".

Secondly, non-combat shouldn't just mean activating modules on containers, but should involve the player using their heads to get loot rather than waiting for their Codebreaker to finish cycling.

3. Nomadic optionAgreed.

4. Chance-based incomeThis is pretty much already the case, combats are your chance of a jackpot with lots of dry spells while Radars are your slightly more consistent income source, so nothing to add here.

5. Dynamic and challengingI'm going to go on some self-indulgent rambling here:What we currently have is random sites spawn in random places, without any relation to each other. What would be nice is: if behind the scenes instead of just rolling a single new site, NPCs would decide to embark on an actual plan, and start off with NPC miners (complete with combat escorts) mining in Gravimetric sites, to combat sites at ship manufacturing yards, to advance scouts erecting listening posts and communication networks before moving to setting up the main forward base, all the way up to them attacking their NPC enemies site and you intervening and choosing a side.

Whether players decide to be impatient and get nice loot as early as possible, or if they try and cultivate the sites by letting the faction spawns escape, would determine whether there is a lot of money to be made at the end of the rainbow.

Instead of being able to look up the site on the wiki and see that there are 10 cruisers, players would warp in and see there are only 5 because someone destroyed some of their shipyards, and that there are 5 extra torpedo batteries because the NPCs have adapted to someone slaughtering their sites in battleships, or maybe there's an extra reinforcement of 20 ships because someone tripped a booby trapped Radar site.

tl;dr: Let sites progress from mining to making ships to fleeting up to shooting their target, and let your actions in one site affect other sites, even if other people are running them.

Oh, and before I forget, obligatory begging:1. Keyboard shortcut for Analyze (Scan) button, pretty please with a cherry on top!2. Wormholes moved from "Unknown" group to their own group3. Drones get evicted from non-drone space or pirate factions take day trips to neighbouring regions

Originally by:Rune StarSo, how do wormholes fit into this equation? I'd love to see WHs finally get their due for iteration in the context of these new ideas for exploration.

Wormholes are the embodiment of the nomadic and unknown parts of space. You can easily get lost with a covert ops frig and spend weeks scanning out different wormholes to traverse through. It'd be great if there were goals oriented around that instead of just getting lost for weeks.

Also, the Sleeper/Jove Empire connection really needs to be expanded and using that as a backdrop for some of the exploration content would be a masterstroke.

So hopefully WHs are a part of this exploration package :)

Wormhole space is a different kettle of fish to nullsec, so it's not explicitly part of what we're trying to do here, at least not directly. If we make new sorts of content though and find they're popular, I'd imagine that they'd filter across to other areas of the game.

I even think some great nullsec exploration missions i.e. finding lost artifacts or bits of an old civilization (or something like that) would be really fun, and would probably get me to want to move into nullsec.

Posted - 2011.08.17 16:04:00 -
[51]
I've seen a lot of people mention that they want some puzzles added to archaeology/hacking rather than just blast ships then cycling a mod as a secondary form of salvage. Let's throw some ideas out here, and tell the devs what we would accept as people running these sites; Give some hints as to what kinds of puzzles these would be. Right now, just saying "add puzzles" is very vague and isn't really adding much to the brainstorming process. It's rare that we get this many blue threads on F&I, so lets put some stuff out there! Example:

Hacking:Why not create a mini-game that pops up when you begin hacking a hack-can. Think something like the old game lights-out. The cans you can attempt to hack with level 1 hacking skills would be pretty easy, only two states, on and off, where you click boxes (random amount, to an extent, random placement, to an extent) which change the state of that box and the ones adjacent. Most anyone could complete this game, given enough time, at this difficulty.

As the hacking level required to get into the can increases, increase the difficulty. More boxes, more states. Instead of on and off, there is red, green, and off (1,2,0, for illustrative purposes.) You want to get all the boxes to 0, but any box that is 0 that is acted on goes to 1, any box that is at 1 goes to 2, and any box that is at 2 and is acted on goes to 0. This could become very time intensive and difficult. People who start these might actually not be able to complete them. Those who practice at this all the time, though, would be rewarded for their problem solving skills with the nicer payouts faster and more often.

Archaeology:When a player begins analyzing an archaeology can, randomly (again, to an extent) generate a game where players are placing certain "salvaged" pieces of technology into some sort of mechanical device.

There would be plenty of ways to fit the pieces together, but only one is the correct way to restore power to the can, allowing it to open. As the difficulty level of the can increases, increase the number of places and parts. Throw in some parts that aren't part of the end solution whatsoever, to throw a wrench into it.

Have the correct solution be somewhat randomized, meaning just because you saw the one with this set of images before doesn't mean you know the exact solution... though perhaps you know from doing these often that certain pieces always go in certain spots.

Could have a tool piece that is never part of the solution, but you can connect to the end of your chain at any point and gives an indicator of whether or not it is okay up to that point. This way, even if it takes a considerable amount more time, players feel like they will surely -eventually- get the thing open, even if it's just by brute force.

Originally by:JokestaI would like some of the Exploration like Archaeology to feel more like Archaeology and not just a variant way of Salvaging. It would be a very good way of releasing Story info about NPC factions.

On the same vein id like to find sites related to the ancient empires The Van Jung? (might have the name wrong)

My biggest frustration over all is that the ships good for Finding sites often cannot run them. I really dont want to ahve to switch ships. Yes i can Buy a t3 that can do it all but thats excessive isk for the results.

I like the idea that some sites may be more hacking Related, even if its just having to hack a gate to get in.

GOOD POINTS. The ship I take to find them is often unable to do anything. I like that CCP is planning on diversifying so that it isn't always about combat. But you do need to have some sites where someone scans and other come along to help - those are really worth something.

MAKE archeology more about information though. Leave salvage to salvaging. Archeology should be about following a trail of BREAD CRUMBS to a hidden solar system or something for Imersion and Role playing. I have taken this idea so far in my head that it means a TRUE EXPLORER (someone who totally immerses him(her)self in the game and travels the entire game (WH's and Null and low) might be able to piece together a puzzle with their brain that would lead to something COMPLETELY AWESOME in reward. This would be thrown out in a carrot style in an interstellar news thing and followed to completetion with the reward being a rare ship (UTU or Freki) or some rare relic or rare clothes or something that there are VERY FEW of. The possibilites are endless. A Yang jung subsytem for your T3 ship, you name it!

Imagine BEING an archeologist in EVE and unlocking with DAYS and WEEKS and MONTHS of work something that the programmers HID INTO EVE. The possibility has to exist and thus people know it is possible but think of the fun that could be had. Some mystersies may take years or NEVER to unravel. Dev's could have so much fun building in clues...it would truly make EVE - ONE OF A KIND. No other MMORPG does this to my knowledge, and it wouldn't be hard to do. Just a skilled writer to flesh it out at CCP and the time to drop the bread crumbs.

You could expand hacking involved that way too as well. Where you hack into pirate sites Finding out who killed the queen and getting a huge isk reward, ETC ETC.

Along with this - explore Making it harder to get things (takes longer) but the better your skills (And IMPLANTS - YES THERE ARE ARCH, HACK and SALVAGE implants - I know I own them!) the quicker it goes or more likely you are to strike it rich. I trained all these skills and bought these implants for WHAT REASON? I want Salvage/hack and Arch to be about skill success and true finding.

One more thought - lets bring back scalable SOV sites/exploration. People work hard to build there SOV - make it worth something. More and better sites in the cruddier true sec areas of NULL. Sanctums and havens can still be for -10 but there has to be some better sites.

That's all i can think of for now.

Grady

(The path I chose for my guy back in 08 was EXPLORATION and industry for reasons like this). Let's build this sort of awesome space experience here in this thread. A whole new expansion for the TRUE explorer in us all. That is what space is all about anyways right?

P.S. I like the idea of mini-puzzle games. Maybe your skill set/implants would give you more pieces of the puzzle to start! Thus keeping it balanced. :)

Posted - 2011.08.17 18:04:00 -
[53]
I too would like to see hacking and archaeology about more than push button and get bacon. (mmm... bacon.)

The idea of piecing together information over a period of time is good. Maybe collecting fragments that turn into a functioning item or blueprint to build some piece of meta or faction gear. Maybe some fragments only turn into a document that details some sort of back story element that can be shared amongst the RP community.

How about archaeology labs or studies that we use to piece together this stuff. Maybe part of the new smallholding?

I think it was Torfi Frans that brought up the concept of parking your ship, hopping out of your pod and walking into a structure to explore with a small team of graduate students. Hoping that your proximity scanner alerts you in time to run back to your ship. Otherwise you have to find a way home by way of a friend dropping off a shuttle or a bullet to the head.

More exploding ships is good but so is more emersion. I would love to dodge pirates and alliance navies to track down the secrets of the universe.

Originally by:Rees NoturanaI too would like to see hacking and archaeology about more than push button and get bacon. (mmm... bacon.)

The idea of piecing together information over a period of time is good. Maybe collecting fragments that turn into a functioning item or blueprint to build some piece of meta or faction gear. Maybe some fragments only turn into a document that details some sort of back story element that can be shared amongst the RP community.

How about archaeology labs or studies that we use to piece together this stuff. Maybe part of the new smallholding?

I think it was Torfi Frans that brought up the concept of parking your ship, hopping out of your pod and walking into a structure to explore with a small team of graduate students. Hoping that your proximity scanner alerts you in time to run back to your ship. Otherwise you have to find a way home by way of a friend dropping off a shuttle or a bullet to the head.

More exploding ships is good but so is more emersion. I would love to dodge pirates and alliance navies to track down the secrets of the universe.

Another idea is to find "scraps" of paper. When assembled in whatever way, pos mod, station lab, they become a T1 BPO. Or if that's too good, a T1/T2 BPC with random ME/PE value. Harder sites produce different metas of "scraps". Better scraps have a higher chance of produceing higher research levels and higher chances of being a T2 BPC. The reason I used the word meta, is then the code for invention could be reused a bit for this process.

Originally by:JokestaI would like some of the Exploration like Archaeology to feel more like Archaeology and not just a variant way of Salvaging. It would be a very good way of releasing Story info about NPC factions.

On the same vein id like to find sites related to the ancient empires The Van Jung? (might have the name wrong)

My biggest frustration over all is that the ships good for Finding sites often cannot run them. I really dont want to ahve to switch ships. Yes i can Buy a t3 that can do it all but thats excessive isk for the results.

I like the idea that some sites may be more hacking Related, even if its just having to hack a gate to get in.

GOOD POINTS. The ship I take to find them is often unable to do anything. I like that CCP is planning on diversifying so that it isn't always about combat. But you do need to have some sites where someone scans and other come along to help - those are really worth something.

MAKE archeology more about information though. Leave salvage to salvaging. Archeology should be about following a trail of BREAD CRUMBS to a hidden solar system or something for Imersion and Role playing. I have taken this idea so far in my head that it means a TRUE EXPLORER (someone who totally immerses him(her)self in the game and travels the entire game (WH's and Null and low) might be able to piece together a puzzle with their brain that would lead to something COMPLETELY AWESOME in reward. This would be thrown out in a carrot style in an interstellar news thing and followed to completetion with the reward being a rare ship (UTU or Freki) or some rare relic or rare clothes or something that there are VERY FEW of. The possibilites are endless. A Yang jung subsytem for your T3 ship, you name it!

Imagine BEING an archeologist in EVE and unlocking with DAYS and WEEKS and MONTHS of work something that the programmers HID INTO EVE. The possibility has to exist and thus people know it is possible but think of the fun that could be had. Some mystersies may take years or NEVER to unravel. Dev's could have so much fun building in clues...it would truly make EVE - ONE OF A KIND. No other MMORPG does this to my knowledge, and it wouldn't be hard to do. Just a skilled writer to flesh it out at CCP and the time to drop the bread crumbs.

You could expand hacking involved that way too as well. Where you hack into pirate sites Finding out who killed the queen and getting a huge isk reward, ETC ETC.

Along with this - explore Making it harder to get things (takes longer) but the better your skills (And IMPLANTS - YES THERE ARE ARCH, HACK and SALVAGE implants - I know I own them!) the quicker it goes or more likely you are to strike it rich. I trained all these skills and bought these implants for WHAT REASON? I want Salvage/hack and Arch to be about skill success and true finding.

One more thought - lets bring back scalable SOV sites/exploration. People work hard to build there SOV - make it worth something. More and better sites in the cruddier true sec areas of NULL. Sanctums and havens can still be for -10 but there has to be some better sites.

That's all i can think of for now.

Grady

(The path I chose for my guy back in 08 was EXPLORATION and industry for reasons like this). Let's build this sort of awesome space experience here in this thread. A whole new expansion for the TRUE explorer in us all. That is what space is all about anyways right?

P.S. I like the idea of mini-puzzle games. Maybe your skill set/implants would give you more pieces of the puzzle to start! Thus keeping it balanced. :)

Originally by:Grady Eltoren...P.S. I like the idea of mini-puzzle games. Maybe your skill set/implants would give you more pieces of the puzzle to start! Thus keeping it balanced. :)

That could easily be part of it. Puzzles could require a minimum skill level to start, and then the difficulty could be modified by the amount of "extra" skill, implants, and whether you're using the T2 version of the module.

As far as I know, the only reason to train most of these skills to 5 is to save a tiny amount of time, since I think you can open about everything with 4. This would give people a real incentive to go for level 5, and even more bonus for shelling out for the T2, the implants, and the rigs etc.

Posted - 2011.08.17 20:15:00 -
[57]
Note: I've been pondering this for a bit, and a few of the comments in this thread (specifically one by Tethys Atreides) got me trying to flesh out the whole idea. It's a sort of end-game for exploration.

I don't know the lore in Eve very well, but assuming there is no backstory or history that goes directly against it, something that I'd like to see happen to Eve would be a very large, but hidden expansion of space. Thousands of systems added to wormhole space, and seed 2% of them to be added to Kspace eventually.The idea being that explorers in wormholes (and wormholes strictly) would have the chance to find a system that has some type of "anchoring signature", or some special condition that exists which indicates that it is close to the edge of known space.If, IF, the explorer can bookmark the site, and IF they can get back to k-space, and IF they have the right equipment ready, they can go the route of establishing a wormhole corporation POS (as is already done), but that anchoring signature allows whoever is in control of the system to begin building a stargate.

Make the construction long term. An incredible amount of material (from T1 to T3 products. Base minerals, moon goo, and so on) could be required. Maybe the construction time would take 6 months or so.

When the initial build is started, it has to reach 5% completion before any basic "alignment" can be done. When the alignment is done, the builders are presented with a choice of several Kspace systems to align the gate with. They can then choose which system to start building the second gate in. Once both gates are complete, the new system is connected with Kspace and officially added to the map, and given a security status relevant to the system it connects to (this leaves possible the idea that one might connect with high-sec, but I know that's a stretch).

To me, that would make exploration a pretty big deal. Especially since the corps that initialize the gates have to be ready to defend their system. In a way, this would allow small/medium size corporations to effectively build their own small empire and have it running and defended before it is brought into the general population of systems. Asteroid belts would have to be scanned and discovered, and so on. People would essentially be responsible for setting up a star system. Unlike any current Kspace systems, these new systems would never have any NPC stations put in or such, so no coding needed for agents, bases, and so on.

Just ideas.__________________________Obi-wan only felt that way about Mos Eisley because he'd never played Eve Online

Originally by:Thomas TurnpointNote: I've been pondering this for a bit, and a few of the comments in this thread (specifically one by Tethys Atreides) got me trying to flesh out the whole idea. It's a sort of end-game for exploration.

I don't know the lore in Eve very well, but assuming there is no backstory or history that goes directly against it, something that I'd like to see happen to Eve would be a very large, but hidden expansion of space. Thousands of systems added to wormhole space, and seed 2% of them to be added to Kspace eventually.The idea being that explorers in wormholes (and wormholes strictly) would have the chance to find a system that has some type of "anchoring signature", or some special condition that exists which indicates that it is close to the edge of known space.If, IF, the explorer can bookmark the site, and IF they can get back to k-space, and IF they have the right equipment ready, they can go the route of establishing a wormhole corporation POS (as is already done), but that anchoring signature allows whoever is in control of the system to begin building a stargate.

Make the construction long term. An incredible amount of material (from T1 to T3 products. Base minerals, moon goo, and so on) could be required. Maybe the construction time would take 6 months or so.

When the initial build is started, it has to reach 5% completion before any basic "alignment" can be done. When the alignment is done, the builders are presented with a choice of several Kspace systems to align the gate with. They can then choose which system to start building the second gate in. Once both gates are complete, the new system is connected with Kspace and officially added to the map, and given a security status relevant to the system it connects to (this leaves possible the idea that one might connect with high-sec, but I know that's a stretch).

To me, that would make exploration a pretty big deal. Especially since the corps that initialize the gates have to be ready to defend their system. In a way, this would allow small/medium size corporations to effectively build their own small empire and have it running and defended before it is brought into the general population of systems. Asteroid belts would have to be scanned and discovered, and so on. People would essentially be responsible for setting up a star system. Unlike any current Kspace systems, these new systems would never have any NPC stations put in or such, so no coding needed for agents, bases, and so on.

Just ideas.

No, just no. Wspace is a separate galaxy out of jump range from the normal one. The current wspace depends on constant exploring and movement, the constant changes to make it profitable...WHY? Because unlike kspace, sites do not respawn immediately, it can be weeks before sites respawn making your kspace connection absolutely useless in the mean time. Jump structures between wormhole systems that would be out in open space like stargates would however be interesting. Easily destroyable/sabotagable and not placable on moons with POSes, etc would introduce some amazing new mechanics.

On a side note, I feel like wspace should be referred as negonesec, because all wspace is labeled -1.0, FAR FAR superior to any silly 0.0 rating :D

However, might I suggest, while you are adding more content, you look into balancing the existing sites? (aka, Magnometric sites)

The average payout for Mag sites are so low that they are practically never worth doing.

For more variety of exploration, It might be interesting to add 'Solar sites'

Sites within 5AU of the sun, which you could add lots of nice sites to do with the sun, such as a 'Solar Farm' or 'Heliosphere Research Complex'.

Another idea that has been suggested countless times is Comets. While I have no idea what they could contain, it could be interesting to have them as moving objects, and that, just like in real life, the closer they are to the sun, the faster they travel. So comets near the sun would need a much faster ship to keep up with it than a comet hundreds of AU away. It would give a balance between spending minimal time scanning for a hard-to-access comet, or spending far more time to find a much easier one to access further out.

One thing that I would be very interested in- would be if CCP could experiment with what the lighting looks like with no/little celestial light (aka- pitch black environment)

Having the only sources of light coming from the ship's interior lights, and its weapon systems (lazors ftw), in my personal opinion, would be awesome. If it looks good, it would be interesting to have that effect for deep space exploration sites.

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